Wideman out for series; Caps to match lines?

2011 ECQF: Washington-New York Live BlogWideman out for series; Caps to match lines?

WASHINGTON -- Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau offered a grim outlook Wednesday for defenseman Dennis Wideman's chances of playing in this series against the Rangers.

"I don’t expect him back for this series, but he’s a really determined young man," Boudreau said. "He’s coming along. He’s walking now. He’s rehabbing it pretty hard right now. He’s a lot better today than he was yesterday. I don’t know if that means anything. If that rate of recovery is good, then it wouldn’t surprise me if in three weeks he’d be ready."

Boudreau didn't get into specifics when he came to matchups for Game 1, but he said he's got an idea for how he wants to go about it.

"We’ll see how it works out," Boudreau said. "Listen, it is so easy to match defense against forwards. Whether you are at home or on the road, it is very simple quite frankly. If they’re matching somebody against one of our lines, especially when the D can go out every second pair and they can get off the ice on any won or lost faceoff in the neutral zone, we’re not going to be too worried about that. It is forwards matching up against forwards that we’ve got an idea of what we want to do."

He's only 17 but he can see the ice so well and he moves the puck and goes to the open ice all the time, so I just think he's a player that is ready to play in the NHL. I'm really looking forward to coaching someone like this.

— U.S. National Junior Team coach Ron Wilson on Auston Matthews, the projected No. 1 pick of the 2016 NHL Draft